![]() Seth, being this kind of guy, asked the girls in our party if they were big fans and of course let them go in front of him, which was obviously the model of Southern gentlemanliness but, on the other hand, HELP A BROTHER OUT, SETH, I FLEW FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, AND YOU ARE TALL. I ended up on a platform on the right side of the stage, behind Roy Bittan and Soozie Tyrell and next to Seth Avett, who joins Michael Stipe on my personal list of Famous People I’ve Watched A Springsteen Concert Next To (Avett was taller). Once behind the band you have up to 18 inches of maneuvering space and every step is basically another chance to ruin something of Max Weinberg’s. ![]() For Springsteen there were three songs, so the “music segment” was half the show, and when you walk across the hardwood stage it’s about three steps before you find yourself stepping over and around wires and cords and E Street Band equipment and Tom Morello’s guitar tech and a “MythBusters” episode’s worth of duct tape. ![]() When you’re on the Band Bench, you sit in the back few rows of the studio, and are brought down prior to the music segment. We took it all in from the Band Bench, the section of the studio reserved for the folks who’ll make their way to the stage during the musical performances. I very much enjoyed writing that sentence. There was a bit during a commercial break in which the zipper on Springsteen’s black leather jacket got stuck, and the short version is for three minutes off-air two women struggled to free a fake-panicking Bruce Springsteen from his clothes while Jimmy Fallon impersonated Bruce’s preacher-man persona and the Roots laid down what I think was polka music. The ’80s-bandanna/LMFAO sketchwas a perfect sequel. Springsteen made a babushka joke, which, as a dutiful Slovak, I’m pretty sure was written just for me (thanks, Boss). The show, of course, was a delirious joy. You know that thing where you stare at somebody like an idiot, trying to see if it’s really that guy, but you can’t tell, and the wifi doesn’t work so you can’t Google image him so you stand there like a hopeless yokel until someone else confirms the identity for you? You do? Great. As it turned out, one of the swarming people in our ticket line looked a lot like Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers, a band that I’ve stalked a fair amount as well (my Billboard review of “I And Love And You,” and me interviewing them at Bonnaroo in 2010). I did the same last week (fly to New York, not have a son), due to a second lightning strike of luck and babysitting, and found myself once again in the lobby at 30 Rock swarmed by a buzzing mass of Bruce people and happily dazed tourists. ![]() On that first tripa buddy and I found ourselves, suddenly and without adequate warning, in a conversation with Bruce Springsteen about children, parenting and the community of siblings, a three-minute galactic improbability that sort of resulted in the birth of my second son. I did it last year when he performed on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” thanks to the success and unprovoked generosity of an old friend who books the musical talent and is inexplicably gracious to inveterate obsessives. Twice now, through no appreciable talent or skill of my own, I’ve been lucky enough to fly to New York City- at not very many moments’ notice - to stalk Bruce Springsteen.
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